I was not around today, but we want to keep FFL. My suggestion was only at the potential heels of despotic moderation of FFL. Those who dislike this site as it is now could think of going over to The Peak, as it was expressly created to avoid this place as it is now. People stay here because it is more intellectually stimulating, in spite of the fact there is one person here that is stupider than all the others. The 'stupidest person' here is really a symbol, like that of the 'unknown soldier', it expresses a principle, not a personality. There is also the smartest person here, but he/she has not posted in a while, and it's not me, it's not Barry, it's not Judy, and it certainly was not Robin. Perhaps that is a figment of my imagination, but someone in a group is always the brightest star in the heavens. Attachment in the spiritual sense just means the awareness is not identified with the attachment, the mind only is. So the self/awareness can be free, and some attachments may remain. Maharishi got attached to people. This is not the 'level' on which attachment/identification in the spiritual sense occurs.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : Doug, I'm not sure what Barry has written here with this novella, but obviously anyone this unhappy with FFL should just up and start their own site as has been suggested by Xeno. It is a little sad in fact to see this level of attachment from someone who professes to be the paragon of "non attachment" Go figure. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Doug, I want to thank you for finally breaking your silence and commenting on the things you will "bear in mind" when looking for posters to censor. Uh, I mean "moderate," of course, because we all know that censorship would be BAD. But I think you're wrong about the "reference" value of the post below, so I will tell you why: 1. This post does NOT represent the feelings of all people who practice TM, although it claims to. Many on this forum who still practice TM and feel positively about Maharishi went out of their way at the time to comment that they did *NOT* feel "insulted" by the post this person is trying say was offensive and insulting. 2. This post is an attempt by one person to assert that she has the "right" to speak for ALL TMers and declare them all "insulted" by the post in question. She has neither that right, nor that ability. As mentioned in point #1, a few strong TMers spoke up back during the original furor saying that they did NOT find the post in question overly offensive, and that they did NOT feel personally offended by it. Thus the person writing this "brief" below is not only speaking for a group she has no right to speak for, she's WRONG in claiming that they would all feel "insulted." She's trying to claim (in essence) that what *she* felt is what *everyone* who practices TM would feel. 3. She's even WRONG about the insulting nature of the post. While the language used to create the metaphor for a certain mindset is admittedly over the top (for effect), the mindset is very real, and has been documented many times in the past -- on this forum and elsewhere. Every time a person knew that Maharishi in real life did and said things that his PR and his dogma claimed he was incapable of doing -- and *ignored* what they knew about what went on in real life -- they were exhibiting this mindset. I call the mindset "Attempting to deal with cognitive dissonance by denying the existence of the conflicting reality that goes against what they've been told to believe." For example, every time one of the skin boys told someone that Maharishi never "entertained" women in his room after hours *when they knew better because they were there and let the women in*, they were exhibiting this mindset. We have *several* of these skin boys on record as belatedly admitting to have lied in this fashion. Or take the TM teachers who, if asked, would swear on a stack of Gitas that Maharishi was *incapable* of being dishonest or breaking the law because he was so "in tune with the laws of nature" that being dishonest would be impossible for him. Then remember that some of the TM teachers saying this had *themselves* been asked by Maharishi to illegally carry large sums of money from Europe to the US, or from Europe to India. They *knew* he was capable of breaking the law because he had asked them to do it for him, but when asked, they denied that he was even *capable* of breaking the law. THAT is the mindset I'm speaking about, and that my metaphor was carefully chosen to represent. It exists. It's more prevalent than people like the author of the screed below want to admit. 4. A *group* cannot feel "insulted" -- only individual humans can feel insulted. This is the problem posed by radical Muslims who claim that saying something they don't like about Mohammed is heresy and "insults" ALL Muslims. Bullshit. 95% of Muslims don't give a shit what some person from another religion or from no religion says about Mohammed. The people claiming that a *group* is offended are just posturing and demonstrating faux outrage. Below, this person is trying to "recruit" people who feel like they're a part of the group she's "faux defending" into agreeing with her, and feel "insulted" by what I posted. Unfortunately for her, many members of the TMer "group" here on FFL *didn't*, so she failed even in that. 5. Finally, the last and most important point -- and the one that those like the person below who are *still* trying to use this moderator boondoggle to "get" the people they've obsessively hated for decades want to obscure -- is that all of this is IN THE PAST. As such, it is not "admissible evidence" when attempting to moderate or ban anyone in the future. Buck has elsewhere *claimed* that he will base his decisions as a moderator on current activity. I don't actually believe him, or believe him capable of doing so, but he *has* claimed it, so if he ever tries to moderate someone based on their supposed "history," everyone has the right to say, "Now WAIT a minute, Doug...you can't do that. You have to show us the exact post you feel is offensive, and it has to have been made since you became moderator and claimed in public that you would allow everyone to 'start over clean.'" Doug, I do not envy you the task you've set for yourself. I think you were quite foolish to undertake it, in fact. But since you have, I really *AM* trying to help by pointing out errors of thinking that -- if you follow them -- will result in making FFL as a group and you as a person into a laughing stock and cause them to lose ANY credibility whatsoever. Falling for an appeal such as the one below -- that claims to speak for an entire group and claims that the entire group was "insulted" just because one person says so -- would be one of those errors. I hope that you will prove yourself wise enough in the future to figure these things out for yourself. Until then, you may expect me to keep commenting on them to help you put them into a perspective that represents a larger slice of the population of Fairfield Life than the voices attempting to use you to "get" people they don't like. From: "dhamiltony2k5@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 4:00 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Moderating The Peep Show Thanks, Authfriend your post here seems a fair brief of a time on FFL. I will keep it at hand as a reference going forward. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : If one were to be actually honest, instead of just pretending to be, two points would need to be made: 1. The "insult" wasn't really to Maharishi; it was to those who revere him. It was said that if they had witnessed him sexually abusing a baby, they would nevertheless continue to maintain he was a life celibate. The hypothetical image of Maharishi abusing a baby was tasteless and offensive, but it was the vicious slur on his followers that triggered the upset and outrage. 2. It wasn't just this one entirely gratuitous insult, malicious as it was, that led TM supporters to walk out. This was just the most recent in a very long and relentless sequence of savage, sadistic insults by TM critics personally targeting TM supporters. Barry wrote, in part: Which is interesting in the context of all this this latest soap opera hysteria on Fairfield Life, because if people are honest, what it's really about is that a few living people became so offended at what was said in passing about a dead person that they went bat-shit crazy.
